Corvette Lead Engineer Confirms ZR1 Not Under Development

John Lamm

Jan 16, 2014

Michael Simari

According to Corvette lead engineer Tadge Juechter, the new Z06 will be as racy as Vettes come.

For months we’ve feared that Chevrolet wouldn’t build a C7 ZR1, and according to a report from Autoblog, our fears have been proven right—at least for now. Corvette lead engineer Tadge Juechter spoke with Autoblog at the Detroit auto show, confirming that the newly launched Z06 is the only high-performance model his team is working on. Of course, when the Z06’s supercharged 6.2-liter V-8 makes 625 horsepower and 635 lb-ft of torque, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for an even-higher-performance model.

Chevy introduced the ZR-1 for the C4 model, but it disappeared for C5, so there has been a precedent set for the model not being available every generation. The final ZR1 we tested produced 638 horsepower and 604 lb-ft of torque from its supercharged 6.2-liter V-8, hitting 60 mph from a standstill in 3.4 seconds. While we’ll lament the loss of the ZR1 in C7 guise—assuming Juechter’s comments don’t mean his team isn’t working on a ZR1 right now—the fact that the bow-tie brand developed the Z06 to have performance numbers so similar to the outgoing range-topper’s makes the grieving process substantially easier.